Kurt Anderson, writing for Vanity Fair Magazine:
He was rigorous about painting only what he saw in his mirror, rather than referring to a reproduction of the Vermeer. Or to his gobsmacking memory of examining the real thing for 30 minutes on a wall in Buckingham Palace, wearing a surgeon’s binocular magnifiers. “We talked the Queen into showing it to us. I was, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s totally different from the reproductions. It’s more muted and bluish.” The biggest differences were the crazily meticulous details—the silver thread at the bottom of the woman’s skirt, the key ring on the teacher. In terms of detail, “It was goofy what he did on the harpsichord. It was eye-opening, astounding to see. I had no idea. My biggest takeaway was that I was an idiot. There’s so much in it.”
When I talked to him again recently, long after the painting and Teller’s documentary were done, I asked about his learning curve over the 220 hours he spent with brush in hand. “I started with the ceiling beams. They look horrible. I hadn’t thinned the paint. I was worried about how you make a smooth gradient, so my daughter showed me that. My brush stroke did get better. By the time I got to the rug I knew how to handle the brush. Not that I could sit down and paint anything today without the apparatus. It’d be a piece of shit.”
Great, often funny piece on a fascinating topic.
(via daring fireball)